BOSTON - Charter schools are working, at least for the students who are enrolled in them.

That’s the message hundreds of parents reaffirmed at a State House hearing Tuesday when legislators questioned the fairness and accountability of charter school spending and discussed freezing new charters until the problem could be studied.

Lindsey Parietti

Charter schools are working, at least for the students who are enrolled in them.

That’s the message hundreds of parents reaffirmed at a State House hearing Tuesday when legislators questioned the fairness and accountability of charter school spending and discussed freezing new charters until the problem could be studied.

“These proud parents are here to fight for their children, and not just their children, but all children,” said Kevin Andrews, vice president of the Massachusetts Charter Public Schools Association, who had nearly everyone at the hearing standing when he asked parents from the state’s more than 60 charter schools to rise.

After discouraging cheering, Sen. Robert Antonioni, D-Leominster, chairman of the Joint Education Committee, stressed the hearing was not meant to revive the more than decade-old debate on the merits of publicly funded charter schools, but to vet bills advocating funding, oversight and other administrative changes.

Rep. Pam Richardson, D-Framingham, who testified on behalf of several bills that would reduce the money charter schools get from school districts and supplement it with separate state funding, challenged the need for charter schools.

“The charter school in Framingham has never had full enrollment,” she said. “I don’t see evidence of demand, and I think this is an indication that district schools are doing something right.”

According to Richardson, a state-mandated formula requires the Framingham School District to pay around $11,000 for each student who leaves to attend a charter school, forcing the district to cut more than $1 million annually from its own budget.

“I don’t believe the goal of the charter school system is to weaken the public school system, but the unintended consequences need to be recognized” she said, citing cuts like the closing of the Juniper Hill Elementary School.

But like many of the parents present, Shrewsbury mother Katherine Ellis, said her sixth- and seventh-graders are getting a much better education at the Advanced Math and Science Academy in Marlborough than they were in the Shrewsbury public schools.

“My children weren’t being challenged. They wanted me to home-school them, but I didn’t feel qualified,” said Ellis, whose children, like all charter school students, won spots at the academy through a lottery. “I took them to an open house and they asked me to enroll them.”

Andrews said any other source outside of the district-mandated funding would be unreliable and could change from year to year based on legislative whims and the state economy.

“We can’t mess with these kids lives,” he said. “Why mess with a good thing?”

But Richardson believes that the uncertainty is nothing more than what district schools already face when it comes time for the state to dole out education aid each year.

“The charter school program is a very expensive program that the community is forced to support without having any say about whether a charter school is placed there,” she said after the hearing.

About a dozen lawmakers and members of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Association of School Superintendents, Municipal Association, and the Association of School Committees said they were frustrated that the state spends $250 million on charter schools annually without monitoring them more closely.

The Legislature’s Joint Education Committee is considering several bills that would establish a commission to study enrollment, spending and education of special needs students among other practices, potentially freezing enrollment and new schools until the report’s completion.

A spokesman for Gov. Deval Patrick, said the governor has instructed education leaders involved with his readiness project to include charter schools in a series of state education recommendations they are preparing for next spring.

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